Wesley Corpus

6. If you constantly meet your band, I make no doubt that you will constantly meet your class; indeed, otherwise you are not of our Society. Whoever misses his class thrice together thereby excludes himself, and the preacher that comes next ought to put out his name. I wish you would consider this. Halt not between two. Meet the brethren, or leave them. It is not honest to profess yourself of a Society and not observe the rules of it. Be therefore consistent with yourself. Never miss your class till you miss it for good and all. And when you meet it, be merciful after your power; give as God enables you. If you are not in pressing want, give something, and you will be no poorer for it. Grudge not, fear not; lend unto the Lord, and He will surely repay. If you earn but three shillings a week and give a penny out of it, you will never want. But I do not say this to you who have ten or fifteen shillings a week and give only a penny! To see this has often grieved my spirit. I have been ashamed for you, if you have not been ashamed for yourself. Why, by the same rule that you give a penny, that poor man should give a peppercorn! O be ashamed before God and man! Be not straitened in your own bowels. Give in proportion to your substance. You can better afford a shilling than he a penny. This is more to him than that to you. Open your eyes, your heart, your hand. If this one rule was observed throughout England, we should need no other collection. It would soon form a stock sufficient to relieve all that want and to answer all occasions. Many of these occasions are now exceeding pressing, and we are nowise able to answer them; so that the cause of God suffers and the children of God, and that without remedy.